Steel Packages
by shadowhuntingdauntlessdemigod
Summary: Tag to 14x11. Dean Winchester spends his fortieth birthday building a coffin. As he reminisces about birthdays past, both good and bad, he finds that this isn't the worst way to spend the last birthday he'll ever have.


_In light of how emotional and intense the back half of this season has been so far, this little idea sprung up into my head. I can't wait to see what they'll do with it in the next episode and how many tissues I'll need._

 _I don't usually write something so introspective, but here's to exploring new styles! As always, feedback is appreciated and cherished!_

 _I don't own anything show related, unfortunately. If I did, I'd say Dean could use a birthday off._

* * *

Dean Winchester spends his fortieth birthday building a coffin.

Strangely enough, it's not the worst birthday he's ever had. It's far from the worst in fact. Given the life he was put into and ultimately chose, paper hats and massive cakes celebrating another year of life and memories didn't come around. More often than not, if the day was even remembered, it was 'celebrated' with a shot of whiskey and the knowledge that it could very well be the last birthday ever.

Dean can count his best birthdays on one hand. The earliest came in little snippets, like photographs, and feelings more than a physical memory itself. It's his fourth birthday, the last one before becoming a big brother, and the last one before his notion of normal birthdays floated away entirely like a balloon let go into the sky.

What he remembers most is the immense happiness. Sure, there were presents and friends, but he also remembers the smiles on both his parent's faces. So peaceful, so in the moment, John hanging over Mary's shoulder while her hands were loosely wrapped around her growing baby bump.

His next birthday was too soon after her death to be of much importance, not that he really understood. John, to his credit, did try. If they weren't on the road all day, sometimes he'd come into the motel room with pie and sit and eat it with his sons while watching cartoons instead of sifting through more gory research. There were little moments, here or there, for his and Sam's birthdays, where they got just an inkling of what a normal one could be like.

He can't remember which birthday after that it was, but John had dumped them at Bobby's as per usual. Dean didn't say anything, but Sam must have, because when he came downstairs in the morning on that fateful day, a cake was set up in the kitchen and there were small packages on the table wrapped in newsprint. Bobby had apologized for the cake, the pie making hadn't gone as planned, but the sheer effort involved had made any apology unnecessary.

All three of them had cake for breakfast, Dean opened his presents, and Bobby taught the boys a card game that they still played even decades later when the world wasn't on the brink of ending.

The next one on Dean's list is tinged with betrayal and hurt in hindsight, but he prefers to not look at it that way. It's his twenty-second, and Sam insists on driving him somewhere special for it, even though he had finals in the coming days during his senior year of high school. For once, apparently the studying could wait. John was out hunting, as was the normal for those days, having left Dean to hang back to tend to some still mending ribs from a ghost that had thrown him through a wall.

While Dean half expected Sam to drive him somewhere lame, or even to the little diner in the tiny town they were staying in that actually had some halfway decent pie, he was actually surprised. Sam drove them to a field on the outskirts of town, parked the car, and grabbed some actually decent beer from the cooler in the back. (Sam was still underage, not that it mattered much in the grand scheme of things).

There was pie and a single candle lit by the same lighter they used on a daily basis. They sat on the hood and watched the stars, both content with the momentary peace in their lives.

Of course, it wouldn't last. Dean hadn't known it at the time, but Sam had already gotten his acceptance letter to Stanford, and a few months later, he would leave. Maybe Dean's slightly more elaborate birthday was a parting gift in disguise? Dean never got around to asking, and was never sure if he actually wanted to know.

The final one had actually been in recent years, on a hunt of all things, when they went and accidentally ran into Charlie and her medieval LARPing game. After months of tension, getting to blow off some steam while fake fighting against a bunch of fake warriors while knowing the problem of the week had been solved was a gift in itself. The fact that Sam got involved too, (probably his own present) face paint and all, and that Charlie was there to share it with them, was special. It just was. Stupid, yeah, but stupid for all the best reasons. It was the most fun he'd had in months…maybe even years.

Though in true Winchester fashion, the bad birthdays outnumbered the good ones. He'd spent one in a hospital, and more than a few far away from a hospital when he probably should have been in one. Three were spent plastered and basically scrubbed from his mind, partially from the booze, and partially because there had been no one to share it with, though the reasons varied between abandonment and death on everyone else's parts, not that he took it personally.

It wasn't that he missed the traditions they had for birthdays, none such existed, but it was better to spend the day with someone than without.

The birthday he spent without Sam but with Lisa and Ben was one of the hardest, and it was only because of Lisa keeping an eye on him that he remembered it at all.

Two years ago had been the worst of the worst. Dean could deal with the loneliness, the bleeding out, the drinking, the whatever that usually came with a day that the universe recognized as indistinguishable from the rest. But being completely isolated in a cement cell without knowing where he was or what was happening to Sam? Without being really able to count the days and know if his birthday had passed or not and if anyone else, let alone himself, had noticed? It just outright sucked.

It had been lonely, cold, mind-numbing, and a new sort of hell all in itself.

But this? Welding together a powered up metal box to stuff himself into? It was a bit morbid, sure, but Dean had learned to count his blessings. He wasn't currently dying, heavily intoxicated, extremely lonely, or incarcerated. He was out in the open, free (trying to not think about Michael in his head threatening to turn that positive upside down), listening to some decent music, and had his family out in the world.

More than that, he was working on a means to an end.

He actually had a way to stop the end of the world, to stop his family from being hurt even more by the choice he had made. He could do something concrete to solve the problem. How often did that happen?

So yeah, Dean Winchester spent his fortieth birthday welding together a metal coffin that would deliver him to the bottom of the ocean with an evil archangel in tow. In a strange way, it was a gift to himself, a promise that Michael wouldn't be over to take over his body and end the world and everything and everyone he ever cared about.

And he was alright with that.


End file.
